THIS BLEW MY MIND

[techristian]

WILL AI PUT BILLIONS OUT OF WORK?

 

https://rumble.com/v4qemp5-will-ai-put-billions-out-of-work.html

 

DAN

[Anderton]

Well, it has the "look and feel" of music, thanks to incorporating the cliches that people associate with music. I've listened to a lot of Suno-created music, and frankly, except for novelty ones there's nothing so far I would play a second time. The biggest giveaway to me is the word salad lyrics that just string together related cliches and phrases. 

 

Will it put people out of work? Sure, non-musicians won't have to hire someone to do generic soundtracks for videos where frankly, the generic quality of AI is a benefit. It won't distract from the visuals. And I'm sure there will be plenty of AI pop music that achieves some degree of success. 

 

I just don't see AI producing material as personal as, say, Taylor Swift or as sweeping in scope as Peter Gabriel. Of course, at some point it will have scraped enough of Taylor Swift's catalog to create Taylor Swift-type songs. Will they ring true? I don't know at what point the technology has to become so advanced that it can have the same feelings as Taylor Swift or Peter Gabriel. 

 

The only precedent I can think of prior to AI was the recognition that Bach's music was highly mathematical (even fractal-like) in nature. People thought that by feeding enough Bach raw material into a computer, it would be able to produce Bach pieces. And it did, sort of - again, the "look and feel" of Bach. But all the pieces lacked the spark of the occasional surprise, the unanticipated solo instrument, etc. 

 

We'll see how it all turns out. It's pretty obvious people will eat fake food, listen to fake news, create fake bodies through surgery, accept lies as real if it fits what they want to believe, create fake demand through marketing, etc. Will they accept fake art? Of course they will. The question is whether that also means that they won't accept real art, because fake art becomes the norm...like kids learning how to sing who think hard pitch correction is normal, and do that with their voices.

 

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

Billions?  With a "B"?

 

There's only what, seven or eight billion people on the planet now, including children etc.

[Anderton]

1 minute ago, Lou Gehrig Charles said:

There's only what, seven or eight billion people on the planet now, including children etc.

 

Cool! Nobody has to work! Let's all go to the beach and eat sand. 🤣

[cphollis]

Early in my career, it was predicted that the new spreadsheet technology (Lotus 1-2-3) would put all the accountants out of work.  That didn't happen.

 

If I were to get paid to produce music for clients, this tech looks like an enormous time-saver to me -- let the AI do the first draft, and have the human takes it from there.

 

It's already a timesaver in the graphic arts, copywriting for advertising, screenwriting, research, etc.    

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, cphollis said:

If I were to get paid to produce music for clients, this tech looks like an enormous time-saver to me -- let the AI do the first draft, and have the human takes it from there.

 

Reminds of when samplers came out, and a union guy said to me they were "going to put musicians out of business." To which my reply was "who do you think plays these things - accountants"?

 

But I think the situation is different here. You won't be paid to produce music for clients. The video director or some video grunt will just type in "something like a Beach Boys song that's uptempo and peppy for a commercial about deodorant, using guitar, bass and drums," and 30 seconds later they have something that's "good enough." The pursuit of excellence seems to have been overtaken by the pursuit of "good enough." 

[jazzpiano88]

11 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

Reminds of when samplers came out, and a union guy said to me they were "going to put musicians out of business." To which my reply was "who do you think plays these things - accountants"?

 

But I think the situation is different here. You won't be paid to produce music for clients. The video director or some video grunt will just type in "something like a Beach Boys song that's uptempo and peppy for a commercial about deodorant, using guitar, bass and drums," and 30 seconds later they have something that's "good enough." The pursuit of excellence seems to have been overtaken by the pursuit of "good enough." 

 

I'm looking forward to the come to Jesus court decision where they decide how to compensate the people who's creative content was used to train the models.  It'll have to be some broad tax on something that everyone pays that gets distributed in some way. 

[RABid]

31 minutes ago, Anderton said:

Reminds of when samplers came out, and a union guy said to me they were "going to put musicians out of business." To which my reply was "who do you think plays these things - accountants"?

All that energy to battle samplers, and they never thought about being replaced by full recordings.

[Bill Heins]

Maybe it's just me but I don't see any difference between using beats, samples, and loops and using AI. Listening to todays pop music I thought AI started a while ago

 

[analogika]

11 hours ago, RABid said:

All that energy to battle samplers, and they never thought about being replaced by full recordings.

 

Thing is that they were right. How many productions would include at least a small string section or horn section if the parts weren't also played by a single keyboard player? 

This AI thing is a whole different scale, but the people railing against synthesisers had a valid point, and it's bin borne out. 

[mcgoo]

On 4/29/2024 at 6:01 PM, Anderton said:

... But I think the situation is different here. You won't be paid to produce music for clients. The video director or some video grunt will just type in "something like a Beach Boys song that's uptempo and peppy for a commercial about deodorant, using guitar, bass and drums," and 30 seconds later they have something that's "good enough." The pursuit of excellence seems to have been overtaken by the pursuit of "good enough." 

 

This hits home for me, because this is how I make my living. Already, custom music in the corporate world has been significantly hurt by the plethora of "good enough" library music that is dirt cheap. Biggest advantage I have over needledrop is that I can write to follow a story, and change moods on a dime, which library music can't do so well. But if AI will be able to quickly generate music that can follow a story, stay out of the way of dialog and create the right mood at the right time, well, that could make what I do a harder sell. 

[KuruPrionz]

Interesting topic and another world. 

I play music live, a mix of covers and original songs. 

I don't own a TV or radio and I probably wouldn't watch or listen if I did. 

Yes, there are commercials on the internet, I ignore them for the most part. 

Commercial music is created with a specific purpose and cost will always be a factor in the equation. It is what it is.

They are selling product through mass media. I'm not judging, just stating obvious facts. 

 

They will never come to the clubs I play in and start playing commercial music. Some clubs leave the TVs on but turn the sound off. Some don't have TVs. The ones that have TVs on with the sound up don't get live music from any of the local talent more than once. Word gets out. 

 

Different world. Not an ideal solution but a real world one. Side job, I play because I love to play. People gotta eat so they compose music for tires and breakfast sandwiches. 

[Notes_Norton]

Back in the 1980s, when the then future Mrs. Notes and I quit the 5-piece band we were in due to personnel problems resulting in loss of work, we became a duo.

My main instrument is saxophone, it's my voice. I also sing and play flute, wind synth, guitar, bass, drums, and some keyboards.

 

Mrs. Notes is a fantastic singer, and she plays rhythm guitar and synth. 

Most duos at the time had a drummer and either guitarist or piano/organ player.

I didn't want to play drums all night. I wanted to sing and play mostly sax on stage, so I bought a multi-track tape recorder, and made my own backing tracks. This later went to MIDI, but MIDI wasn't around a lot in the mid 1980s.

 

Other musicians used to say, “You are putting musicians out of work with that thing.” 

 

My response was, “I'm putting two musicians to work. I'm gigging in rooms that historically only hired singles or duos, so tell me who am I putting out of work?”

That usually ended the conversation.

Now is AI going to put songwriters out of work? I suspect to a certain extent. Sooner or later it'll regurgitate enough of the past hits to make something the public will eat when it is fed to them. After all, remember the hit song, Get Up And Boogie by The Silver Convention? If you don't, here are the lyrics.

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie

 

That's it. Background “singers” in parentheses.

 

I'm sure AI is capable of that already. And if promoted properly, anything can be a million seller.

 

Insights and incites by Notes 

[Notes_Norton]

1 minute ago, KuruPrionz said:

I don't own a TV or radio and I probably wouldn't watch or listen if I did. 

I gigged on cruise ships from 1986 to 1990. The TVs on the ship only played a movie over and over and over again, and the port advertisement commercials.

I got out of the habit of watching TV. Instead, I got into the habit of doing things, rather than watching things.

When my mother-in-law needed care, we jumped ship, I hooked the cable up, and a couple of months later, Mrs. Notes and I realized we were paying $45 a month for something that we weren't using. So we disconnected and never looked back. 

The last two TV shows I watched were Johnny Carson's last Tonight show, and Jay Leno's first Tonight show. And we had to go to my mother-in-law's house to do that.

 

Full disclosure: We have a small TV, and we turn it on once a week to watch a movie. We had the minimal Netflix one-disc-at-a-time subscription for a while, now we go to the library, or stream from public library associated sites.

 

I guess we're weird.

In my duo we play covers. Some like the record, some similar, and some are our own complete rearrangement. We also play many different genres of music, from the 1920s to the 2020s. We do pop, rock, country, Caribbean, Musica Latina, and whatever. It's easier to say what we don't do. We do only one heavy metal song and only one rap song. 

 

I would play 'art music' but you can't make a living doing that around here. I like not being a wage slave working from Monday to Friday, getting bossed around, and living for the weekends. I'm free. I make my living playing music, I benefit from my good decisions, and hopefully learn from my bad ones. And we really enjoy what we do. It's the most fun we can have with our clothes on, and we make a living that way. 

 

I don't think AI is going to take this job away from me, at least in my lifetime. 

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[KuruPrionz]

8 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

I gigged on cruise ships from 1986 to 1990. The TVs on the ship only played a movie over and over and over again, and the port advertisement commercials.

I got out of the habit of watching TV. Instead, I got into the habit of doing things, rather than watching things.

When my mother-in-law needed care, we jumped ship, I hooked the cable up, and a couple of months later, Mrs. Notes and I realized we were paying $45 a month for something that we weren't using. So we disconnected and never looked back. 

The last two TV shows I watched were Johnny Carson's last Tonight show, and Jay Leno's first Tonight show. And we had to go to my mother-in-law's house to do that.

 

Full disclosure: We have a small TV, and we turn it on once a week to watch a movie. We had the minimal Netflix one-disc-at-a-time subscription for a while, now we go to the library, or stream from public library associated sites.

 

I guess we're weird.

In my duo we play covers. Some like the record, some similar, and some are our own complete rearrangement. We also play many different genres of music, from the 1920s to the 2020s. We do pop, rock, country, Caribbean, Musica Latina, and whatever. It's easier to say what we don't do. We do only one heavy metal song and only one rap song. 

 

I would play 'art music' but you can't make a living doing that around here. I like not being a wage slave working from Monday to Friday, getting bossed around, and living for the weekends. I'm free. I make my living playing music, I benefit from my good decisions, and hopefully learn from my bad ones. And we really enjoy what we do. It's the most fun we can have with our clothes on, and we make a living that way. 

 

I don't think AI is going to take this job away from me, at least in my lifetime. 

 

Insights and incites by Notes

I do like to get the audience up out of their chairs and dancing. Groove can be a subtle but engaging art form. Timing is everything. Stiff "on the one" timing produces on type of dancing, a backbeat or forward push create other moves. 

[Threadslayer]

On 4/29/2024 at 1:12 PM, cphollis said:

t was predicted that the new spreadsheet technology (Lotus 1-2-3) would put all the accountants out of work.  That didn't happen.

That's a pretty good analogy. Once the initial fuss died down (I go back to pre- Lotus Visicalc), spreadsheets became a huge boon to accountants and everyone else who tabulates and crunches numbers.

[Anderton]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:01 AM, analogika said:

the people railing against synthesisers had a valid point, and it's bin borne out. 

 

I don't recall nearly as much pushback on synthesizers as there was on samplers. The early samplers were primitive enough one could make an argument they weren't a threat to musicians, but that sure has changed. Still, it's kind of a mixed bag. It seems the ongoing trend is all about maximizing profits. Consider TV variety shows, which used to have bands. Eventually they probably would have been downsized to a dude with an arranger keyboard   Or a music library.

 

I think this is all about the ongoing devaluation of music. As tools came along that required less and less skill to create "the look and feel of music," I think that contributed to the perception  music wasn't really a skill that was worthy of reward. Well, unless you're Beyonce. 

[Anderton]

6 hours ago, mcgoo said:

But if AI will be able to quickly generate music that can follow a story, stay out of the way of dialog and create the right mood at the right time, well, that could make what I do a harder sell. 

 

Sony's Cinescore program could do a basic version of that, and this was several years ago. I'm not sure why it was taken off the market. 

 

Best case scenario in your case is the "drum machine scenario." When drum machines came out, I was still a union guy doing studio work. The common wisdom was that drummers would no longer be needed, but it turned out that drummers made the best drum machine programmers, by far. So they still ended up being hired.

[techristian]

One thing I must say about this "new AI music" is that it all sounds like cookie cutter music. The POP today all has that same feel, as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure that if this had been dropped into the late 60's we would have never heard anything as innovative as "Whole Lotta Love" and "Aqualung"  and many more experimental songs that tried a new direction of innovation, or in the 90's with "Alternative" style. That also would have never happened. NEVER.

 

Nevertheless, corporations look at the bottom line and this will be attractive to them.

 

Dan

[MathOfInsects]

Hunter S. Thompson used to write paragraphs, then cut the sentences out, mix them around, and reassemble them into new paragraphs. 

What do we think about the ethics of this?

[Anderton]

I guess the main difference is he wrote the paragraphs, he didn't scrape articles written by others on the internet. 

 

I do the same thing, though...it's called "editing," because my first drafts suck 

[MathOfInsects]

The artists who make pictures and portraits out of tiny headshots of people...is that art? Is it ethical?

[Anderton]

It depends...a lot hinges on whether the work is judged as transformative.

 

https://blogs.uoregon.edu/appropriationartfieldguide/warhol/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/andy-warhol-copyright-prince-paintings-lawsuit
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/announcement/view/112

 

It also seems a lot depends on whether someone actually wants to sue or not.

 

[Thethirdapple]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

Hunter S. Thompson used to write paragraphs, then cut the sentences out, mix them around, and reassemble them into new paragraphs. 

What do with think about the ethics of this?

 

Hunter had ethics? 🙃

 

 

 

 

PEACE

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[analogika]

5 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

I don't recall nearly as much pushback on synthesizers as there was on samplers.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/musicians-union-outlaw-synthesisers/

 

Favourite quote:

 

"As was so often the case, it was Barry Manilow’s fault."

[MathOfInsects]

20 minutes ago, Anderton said:

It depends...a lot hinges on whether the work is judged as transformative.

 

https://blogs.uoregon.edu/appropriationartfieldguide/warhol/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/andy-warhol-copyright-prince-paintings-lawsuit
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/announcement/view/112

 

It also seems a lot depends on whether someone actually wants to sue or not.

 

For sure—that line was Warhol’s provocation. But I’m thinking more of these types of works:

 

[Anderton]

Well, I would consider it transformative, regardless of whether it was done by a human, or a human inputting instructions into an AI engine. But I'm not a copyright lawyer or judge.

[MathOfInsects]

15 minutes ago, Anderton said:

Well, I would consider it transformative, regardless of whether it was done by a human, or a human inputting instructions into an AI engine. But I'm not a copyright lawyer or judge.

I'm not really asking about the legality of it, though. To me that's a whole different issue. I'm probing to find out where people's discomfort starts--where the line is that something needs to cross to make them fear or dismiss it. 

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm not really asking about the legality of it, though. To me that's a whole different issue. I'm probing to find out where people's discomfort starts--where the line is that something needs to cross to make them fear or dismiss it. 

That is a variable line, humans are very different with regards to choices. 

What bothers one person may delight another. 

[Thethirdapple]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm not really asking about the legality of it, though. To me that's a whole different issue. I'm probing to find out where people's discomfort starts--where the line is that something needs to cross to make them fear or dismiss it. 

Cowbell

 

 

 

 

 

PEACE

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